Safely in Central Asia (Saturday, March 27, 2004)
During yesterday, both storks flew to the western Tajikistan. We can take a deep breath now: the most marginal part of their journey is overcome. I worried mostly about Iristu who flew only a short way at the beginning of the week, and then stopped near Kabul.
Iristu reached 470 kilometers since Wednesday till Friday evening, which is a respectable deed regarding that he flew through Hindukus initially and then through the Fan mountains (a part of (Pamir-Alai) lately. Iristu's flight map is really worth seeing - he makes his way straight northward although he has got extremely high mountains ahead. He'll be half-way soon and, providing the same tempo, he could reach Ob in a week. By the way: the forecast for Novosibirsk starts to be quite optimistic. For instance, tonight should still be -23 degrees and tomorrow -4 during the day, but in the second half of the week, the temperature shouldn't fall below the zero, even at night.
Altynai flew over 300 kilometers yesterday (!) and now is flying right behind Iristu. Although - she takes aim more at west and probably won't fly across the high edges which Iristu is directed at (he perhaps wanted to "cut" it across Hindukus's highest part in the eastern Afghanistan, but failed to do so and had to turn west or even go back south - we're unfortunately not able to find out exactly how it was...).
In the end, I would like to recall that the maps, we were mentioning at the start of this page, are being updated continuously. So, you don't have to wait for our reports to find out what's new with Iristu and Altynai...